ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (GZ302) Review – The Ryzen AI Max Advantage

Unboxing

The ASUS ROG Flow Z13 has gone through a bit of a makeover when AMD created the most powerful consumer APU on the market in the form of Ryzen AI Max series processors, also known as ‘Strix Halo’. This rather big box includes quite a few things, starting with two boxes (one packing the chargers, the other housing the laptop) and a dedicated pouch for this tablet.

Quite unconventionally, you’re provided with two sets of chargers when you get one of these tablets: the first is the 200W charger with a reversible rectangular connector, while the other is a smaller 100W charger that charges via USB-C. Admittedly, that’s still quite bulky compared to GaN chargers you’ll find on the market that doesn’t require a separate AC cable.

Also, there’s a minor printing mistake for the documentations which was labeled “G Series” for some reason. In any case, here are all the parts included:

– Tablet pouch
– 2x Type G (UK) AC adapter
– 200W DC charger
– 100W USB-C charger
– ASUS Pen 2.0 & accessories (pen, clip, spare tips, USB-C charging cable, user guide)
– User guide
– Quick start guide
– MyASUS leaflet
– Detachable keyboard
– ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (GZ302) main unit

Walkaround

As a ‘gaming tablet’, the ROG Flow Z13 already got the gamer aesthetics sorted with the rear featuring sci-fi looks and a transparent window that exposes parts of the motherboard (with RGB lighting, naturally). There’s also a 13MP camera on the top right, while the intake ports spread across two zones are blended well into the design itself.

By tablet standards, the ROG Flow does feature relative thick bezels – while visually not as appeasing, it’s more practical in terms of carrying the tablet while avoiding accidental touches. Above the bezel houses the 5MP webcam along with IR sensors for Windows Hello, along with the microphones; as for the keyboard, improvements have been made on the keycaps (with a crispier type feeling), and the touchpad (now larger and clicks great). That said, the backlight is quite a lot dimmer than I expected.

The hinge mechanism is mostly the same, opting for the same flap design like the ones you’ll find in Microsoft Surface tablets. It opens up pretty wide for an effective angle of around 165 degrees on a flat surface, and behind it lies an access door to the sole M.2 2230 SSD that powers this tablet.

Not much happening on the top and bottom side of the tablet, with the top side solely dominated by two exhaust ports and the “Republic of Gamers” branding, while the bottom side features the slots and pogo pins for the included magnetic keyboard.

The sides are where all the I/O lies, with the majority of them situated on the left side. These include a pair of USB4 ports, HDMI 2.1 FRL port, DC charging port, along with UHS-II microSD card slot; on the opposite side, you have a single USB-A 10Gbps port and a headphone jack, along with the control buttons.

Specifications

ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (GZ302E-ARU007W)

Full specifications available on product specification page.

CPU	AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 5.1GHz / 16 cores, 32 threads
RAM	32GB quad-channel LPDDR5X-8000 (onboard)
GPU	Integrated: AMD Radeon 8060S
NPU	AMD XDNA NPU (50 TOPS)
Storage	Kioxia BG6 Series 1TB SSD KBG60ZNS1T02 PCIe 4.0 x4, M.2 2230 Host Memory Buffer (HMB) support
Display	TIANMA TL134ADXP03 13.4″ IPS-level, glossy touchscreen 2560×1600 (QHD+ 16:10) 180Hz refresh rate 100% DCI-P3, 10-bit (1.07B colors) 1500:1 contrast ratio 500 nits max brightness (HDR) Pantone Validated Stylus support
Keyboard	Magnetically-attached via pogo pins, single-zone RGB backlighting
Touchpad	Precision touchpad (via magnetically-attached keyboard)
Audio	2x 2W side-firing stereo speakers Dolby Atmos Support
Webcam	Front: 5MP IR camera (shutter not present) Rear: 13MP camera
Biometrics	Facial recognition (Windows Hello)
I/O	Left: 2x USB4 40Gbps (DisplayPort, 100W PD) 1x HDMI 2.1 FRL (48Gbps, max. 8K 60Hz) 1x DC-in 1x UHS-II microSD card reader Right: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A 1x 3.5mm combo jack
Wireless Connectivity	MediaTek MT7925 Wi-Fi 7 160MHz tri-band, 2×2 MIMO Bluetooth 5.4
Battery	70Wh 4-cell Li-ion
Power Supply	200W DC power supply (reversible DC connector) 100W DC power supply (USB-C connector) 100W USB-C charging support
Operating System	Windows 11 Home 24H2
Dimensions	300 x 204 x 13.0~14.9 mm (tablet only) 300 x 206 x 5.5 mm (keyboard)
Weight	1.20 kg (tablet only) 0.39 kg (keyboard)

Performance

Storage

The Kioxia BG6 series SSD performs decently for a size-constrained M.2 2230 SSD, although its random I/O performance is not quite up there as the Micron 2400 used in the preceding model. We also found that this drive relies on HMB (Host Memory Buffer) to accelerate speeds, and in practice it should serve any user just fine.

CPU

The main reason why Strix Halo was such a big deal when AMD first developed it was the sheer amount of CPU and GPU you can put into a single chip, and it certainly translates here: the 16 Zen 5 cores are able to comfortably deliver a lot of performance, especially punching plenty of laptops above its size class; in particular, it doubled the multi-core performance of the predecessor model housing the top Intel chip at the time.

Granted, a proper flagship gaming laptop like the ROG Strix SCAR or MSI TITAN HX will still be considerably more powerful, as the TDP limit is still a major restricting factor for the tablet’s performance – but there’s nothing beating the ROG Flow in terms of performance-per-inch here.

Something to note for the power draw: we measured a sustained 70W under Turbo mode reaching 80°C, though you can further increase the peak TDP up to 93 watts (80W sustained) by enabling Manual mode via Armoury Crate, with temperatures reaching 90°C in this case. Since both the CPU and GPU share the same silicon, this TDP limit applies to both – so if you want even more performance in both compute and gaming (around 5-10% more than Turbo), consider this option.

GPU

The raw performance of Radeon 8060S graphics is more or less on par with the entry-level discrete GPUs from most gaming laptops, although keep in mind these NVIDIA RTX GPUs pretty much max out their TGPs (usually 115W). The Radeon 8060S, under Performance power mode, maintains similar performance at 55W TDP envelope, which shows the power efficiency of the RDNA3.5-based GPU. That said, RTX still reigns supreme in ray tracing, as seen in Speed Way and Port Royal benchmarks.

System

The new ROG Flow Z13 performs significantly better than other machines in the Novabench test, of which the CPU performance metric is a dominant factor in the scores. We can see the GPU performance in this regard trails slightly behind conventional gaming laptops in this chart.

For PCMark 10, while the scores of the new ROG Flow Z13 are pretty much the same as the predecessor, the individual scores vary a lot. In particular, the Digital Content Creation metric is significantly better on the new Ryzen+Radeon combination, while the old Intel+NVIDIA combination is better in Essentials and Productivity metrics. Oddly, Silent mode performs better in these two metrics compared to Performance and Turbo – we tested this several times to make sure it wasn’t a one-off.

Battery

Among the lists of gaming devices we have here (and one Zenbook to represent regular premium laptops with a bit of gaming capability), the ROG Flow Z13 performs decently in terms of battery life, stretching 7 hours plus in both power profiles. It’s a surprisingly small but still measurable improvement over the previous hardware combination, and that’s likely one of the reasons why ASUS made the switch to this chip to power this gaming tablet (the other being thermals and packaging).

Gaming

If you’re targeting 60FPS gaming, the new ROG Flow Z13 with Radeon 8060S graphics – with copious amounts of “VRAM” available (as it is shared with system memory, in this case 32GB) – can handle most games in High or Ultra settings reasonably well at 1080p, although some of the recent titles are especially demanding so you’ll need upscaling and even frame generation to help.

The Good

It’s perhaps a surprising fact to know that AMD’s most powerful laptop chip doesn’t power the big, heavy gaming laptops; instead, it’s powering this 13-inch tablet with performance that matches and even exceeds those above its size class. If you want a lot of compute power on something that’s plenty portable, the ROG Flow Z13 fits right within that niche – another benefit of having a unified silicon a la Apple M-series is the improved thermals, along with extra battery life.

The keyboard and touchpad has seen a big upgrade and I can confidently say they’re perfectly usable, with stiff base, clicky keys, and a larger touchpad with crispier clicks overall. Essentially, a very laptop-like experience – and you get the touch screen along with stylus support to give you plenty of ways to interact with the tablet. On that note, the display is great overall: solid brightness, fast response, and accurate colors.

The Bad

There aren’t any major flaws as far as this ROG Flow Z13 is concerned, although there are many improvements worth making for the next iteration. When I first received this machine for review, I do have high expectations as this unified silicon design should bring big upgrades in terms of gaming performance, but numbers proved that this is still largely an iterative upgrade over the predecessor despite the fundamental changes in hardware design. The same RT performance deficiency continues to plague Radeon GPUs, so keep your expectations low if you want to enable this graphical feature.

Performance aside, there are a few design chances worth making: first, the keyboard backlight is a lot dimmer than I imagined, so if you’re in a reasonably bright room, chances are the backlights get washed out easily. Internally, I do think two things need changes – the side-firing speakers aren’t particularly good at bass frequencies, and I’d argue that having a rear-facing design with sound reflecting off the surface could probably help with soundstage as well. Also, the MediaTek Wi-Fi 7 module only supports 160MHz, which shouldn’t really qualify as a true Wi-Fi 7 in our opinion (it’s just like the HDMI 2.1 situation all over again).

Also, while you will be given two charger units for this tablet, the 100W USB-C charger is simply too bulky to carry when third-party GaN chargers exists – or, you know, MacBooks already had this figured out a long time ago. Carrying an extra AC cable for a charger designed to reduce clutter just sounds counterintuitive, and you can’t solve that by simply halving the charging brick’s size. This certainly doesn’t help with the overall weight of the tablet with accessories to be carried along, which can add up quickly and negates the portability advantage of this tablet.

Verdict

The ROG Flow Z13 (GZ302) is certainly not cheap for the unique form factor it offers, and for this specification you’re looking at the price tag of RM10,999. That’s a high price if you’re looking from a gaming performance perspective, but this tablet is not designed solely for this purpose; instead, this tablet fits into the niche of people demanding the combination of portability and features of a tablet, and performance of a gaming laptop. In this regard, there’s practically no other machine that fits this bill, and for this iteration, the Ryzen AI Max processor certainly gives it a unique advantage.

Special thanks to ASUS Malaysia for providing the ROG Flow Z13 (GZ302) for this review.